Mikołaj Łoziński

Mikołaj Łoziński (b. 1980) – writer, graduate of the Sorbonne. Recipient of the Kościelski Foundation Prize. His debut novel Reisefieber (2006) was very well received by critics as well as readers. Translation rights to Reisefieber were sold to 6 countries.

Thirty-something Mikołaj Łoziński has written the awesome Książka (WL). Behind the unassuming title lurks an autobiographical novel about three generations of Jewish-Polish intelligentsia, caught up in 20th-century history. Pre-war Communists; Holocaust survivors; the beneficiaries of Communist Poland; victims of the 1968 anti-Semitic witch-hunt, when they were ordered to “get the fuck out”; and finally supporters of the democratic opposition. It’s also about their political activism and unstable family life where no one ever behaved normally.

Książka is a totally new take on the “family history”. In a series of microscenes and dialogues organised non-chronologically, seemingly quite trivial but streaked with tragedy and lit up here and there with absurd humour. Łoziński talks about the banality of love, treachery, illness, maturity, aging and parting.

Using a mixture of ruthlessness and tenderness and simple language that never lapses into cliché, the author manages to communicate a sense of reality rarely achieved in Polish prose.

And although the thread of żydokomuna (Jewish Communism) is not the most important of the entire book, the book is also original in this respect. Perhaps the younger generation will be mature enough to talk without politically-tinged emotion about one of the most taboo subjects of Poland’s recent history?

Prizes:

Polityka Passport 2011

Thirty-something Mikołaj Łoziński has written the awesome Książka (WL). Behind the unassuming title lurks an autobiographical novel about three generations of Jewish-Polish intelligentsia, caught up in 20th-century history. Pre-war Communists; Holocaust survivors; the beneficiaries of Communist Poland; victims of the 1968 anti-Semitic witch-hunt, when they were ordered to “get the fuck out”; and finally supporters of the democratic opposition. It’s also about their political activism and unstable family life where no one ever behaved normally.

Książka is a totally new take on the “family history”. In a series of microscenes and dialogues organised non-chronologically, seemingly quite trivial but streaked with tragedy and lit up here and there with absurd humour. Łoziński talks about the banality of love, treachery, illness, maturity, aging and parting.

Using a mixture of ruthlessness and tenderness and simple language that never lapses into cliché, the author manages to communicate a sense of reality rarely achieved in Polish prose.

And although the thread of żydokomuna (Jewish Communism) is not the most important of the entire book, the book is also original in this respect. Perhaps the younger generation will be mature enough to talk without politically-tinged emotion about one of the most taboo subjects of Poland’s recent history?